Effectiveness
Political consultant Ed Rollins said of the moneybomb concept, "I'll tell you, I've been in politics for 40 years, and these days everything I've learned about politics is totally irrelevant because there's this uncontrollable thing like the Internet. Washington insiders don't know what to make of it."
A 2006 Federal Election Commission ruling, exempting most Internet activity from campaign finance rules, created the loophole for moneybombs, according to Paul Ryan, a lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center: "It's difficult to imagine any threat of corruption posed by an activist sitting at home trying to talk people into making small donations directly to a candidate's campaign .... These small donors are a good thing for the system .... This is the classic example of the modern soapbox."
Sonia Arrison of TechNewsWorld considered the transparency in pledge and donation amounts to be an important open-source element of moneybomb success: "Those revelations stand in direct contrast to traditional campaigns, which tend to be silent and proprietary about who is donating."
Campaign finance analyst Leslie Wayne regarded the YouTube and viral campaigning associated with moneybombs as an unexpected new trend in campaign finance. Wayne found the November 5 event a remarkable success because "the Paul campaign never even asked donors for the money. A grassroots group of Paul supporters, via the Internet, all decided to have a one-day online fund-raiser for Dr. Paul." RealClearPolitics considered Paul's two largest moneybombs to be one of the five moments that changed the 2007 GOP race, and the "incredibly successful" November 5 moneybomb was awarded a Golden Dot as "Technology Impact Moment of the Year" at the 2008 Politics Online Conference.
The link between moneybombs and polling results is unclear.
Read more about this topic: Moneybomb